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GARETH DAVIES Away (1995/96) Umbro v Moldova 1995

Gareth Davies's match worn long sleeved away shirt, worn at home, from the 1-0 European Under 21 Championship qualifying victory against Moldova in Cardiff on 5th September 1995. Gareth G-man Davies played 8 times for Wales Under 21 representative side, gaining the majority of his 8 caps whilst playing for Hereford United. Having worked with Gareth at Hereford United, he had promised me one of his shirts for a very long time and i was pleased when i met him in August 2011, he produced this shirt, a very nice surprise! Cheers G-man

I'd just like to say that this style of Umbro away shirt (officially petrol blue, red & white) the last away shirt produced during Umbro's second spell as Wales kit suppliers is genuinely a rare match shirt to find. Worn by the first team on only 4 occasions, but photographic evidence can only usually be seen in 2 full internationals! Due to the few occasions it was worn a number of the player spec shirts were sold to retail by Umbro -repackaged as Umbro Authentics or Vintage- so there are a number turning up on various auction sites that have had the retro style numbers applied and have suddenly become "match worn". The player spec shirts without numbers can be found on of reputable retro/replica shirt sites and occasionaly they appear on online auction sites. But there is one major DIFFERENCE to these Umbro Authetic player spec shirts and the actual players match shirts from this era, which confirms if the shirt is genuine or produced in a later batch that were never used by the Welsh senior or other representative teams.

This practice of adding retro numbers is more than a little frustrating. I have been collecting Wales match worn players shirts vigorously for 7 years now and have only managed to obtain 4 shirts of this style, 2 with excellent provenance, and 2 from player friends, one substitute's shirt and the other an Under 21 shirt given to me as a gift. Maybe i'm looking in the wrong places for my match worn shirts!!? So this rant here is me alerting others to be aware of this practice in an attempt to stop others possibly getting ripped off.